Saturday, January 30, 2010

A renegade jeweler and a bespoke wallpaper artist. Inspiration for clay? You bet.

LOLA BROOKS: ROCK STAR

Lola Brooks, a jewelry artist with more than her fair share of tattoos, (two sleeves full, thank you very much,) has a beautiful, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek approach toward precious materials.

I love the chunky, candy-like quality of these heart brooches - those pink faceted gems - delish. And the garnet-studded net of her bleeding heart is at once a little squirmy and a lot rockin'. I love that she takes these precious objects and turns them into something else - something with wit and soul and life.

If Lola Brooks is a rock star of jewelry, then Tracy Kendall is the couturier of wallpaper. Her three dimensional work is elegant, witty and perfect. I love her use of words, of repetition, of unorthodox elements.

Why let the gorgeous words of Tennyson and Shakepeare languish in dusty books? Let the lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream breathe and inspire stitched in a fluid font on your bedroom wall! I wonder if Tracy Kendall's handwriting actually looks like this?

Monday, January 18, 2010

No, not daily GRINDS, daily ROUTINES. The good, loose order of daily life things. Like: morning coffee and toast, a proper lunch in the early afternoon, times for returning emails, for laundry, for blogging, for cleaning clay tools, for picking kids up from school. Etcetera, etcetera.

My non-negotiable daily routine is a morning walk. Soon as I drop the kids off. Even in the rain because God knows I'm not made of sugar. I breathe belly breaths. Sometimes I take my ipod and sometimes I don't. I try to clean my brain's house, shake out all the crap. I leave a trail of detritus behind me - little pieces of mental paper on which are written all my "supposed tos and shoulds and have tos and don't wanna dos". I envision the passing cars ripping right through those little bits.

And then I fill my brain back up, with other things, cleaner things: the dark framework of winter trees against a cold, ceramic blue sky, lacy green lichen on bark, half a pretty walnut, an impossibly red cardinal against a last small pile of snow.

I return a half hour later, or an hour, maybe even more if there's a considerable amount of crap to shake loose. I empty my pockets. Here's today's collection:

Check out the piece of wood that looks like a long-billed bird. And the long twist of vine. I even love all their shadows.

And then as C.S. Lewis said: "The routine from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident..."

Read about the daily routines of the likes of painters Gerhard Richter and Jasper Johns at: